144 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, December 7, 1858. 
the usual time ; but those who look for such things will 
not be disappointed. 
Another subject—after which I had taken a wide circuit 
in the long vacation—is out-door Grapes. Neither Po- 
mological nor Pomona seem to care much about Grapes 
from the open air, and yet I am bound to assert there arc 
soma hundreds who would most willingly join in pushing 
Grapes as far up the south walls as they could reach. I 
gained a most curious insight into the subject. I found 
out-of-door Grapes, this autumn, with bunches weighing 
from one to three pounds, and far better-looking Grapes 
than some of those which took prizes in St. James’s Hall. 
I also found that every plant which produced such 
bunches were, invariably, pruned quite contrary, and in 
direct opposition, to the best practice of us gardeners; 
and I was flatly, and without flattery, told by some of 
the owners of these Grapes, that gardener’s pruning would 
never produce, and never could produce, a bunch of Grapes 
in this country much over lib. in weight. I believe it, 
too, for I pruned my own out-door Vines, as good and as 
earnestly as any gardener ever did in this world, and 
yet my bunches were not heavier than that; but my crop, 
for evenness, looked more like hothouse Grapes. 
The best out-door Grapes, and the best crop I have 
met with, after them, was produced on Vines which have 
been pruned on Hoare’s system from the beginning. 
They were on the north side of the city of London, as 
you go to Mr. Cutbush’s nursery, at Highgate, and be¬ 
longed to J. Jefferson, Esq., of Carlton Villas, Holloway. 
Mr. Jefferson does all the pruning himself, and he under¬ 
stands Hoare much better than some of us first-class gar¬ 
deners. He has ripened, this season, as many kinds of 
Grapes as Hoare mentions in his treatise, but not just the 
same kinds. I sent him buds of my black Grape, which 
puzzled the best gardeners in Willis’s Rooms last year, 
and for which seven distinct and different names were 
afiklavited on the spot, and he sent me a jar of most 
beautiful-looking and delicious jelly, which Mrs. Jefferson 
makes from the thinnings of the Grapes. 
Hut about the tremendous large bunches of Grapes. 
They were produced from nursery stools, which stood in 
good vineyard soil, since the comet of 1811. No need, 
therefore, to tell me, and “the likes o’ me,” that age 
will stint the weight of bunches on good dry soil, with a 
sound bottom. These stools were not used for many 
years, to get layers from, in the old style of slow-and-sure 
propagation, but were cut back to the last eye or two, 
to get the longest possible shoots, to be cut into single 
eyes, in February or March, to make sale Vines. Now, a 
good stool would, or did throw up, from seven to eleven 
shoots, as I counted them, and each shoot had one bimeh 
close to the ground at the start. Some shoots had three 
bunches; but the big bunches, which astonished me, stood 
singly, and the spurs, as one may say, before these 
bunches were from ten feet to sixteen feet long. There¬ 
fore, that was neither the spurring nor the long-rod 
system: it was the stool system. Now, I could make a 
fool system out of one of these stools, and tools of the 
Pomologicals ; and I would make my lord’s gardener 
look very foolish before the Society, by producing out- 
of-door Grapes better than he could from the hothouses, 
and from Vines four times the age of his Vines, and 
forty times closer pruned every year, than any lord’s 
Grapes in Christendom. That is what I would call the 
fool system. But lest others would do as I could, I 
would advise the Pomological Judges, and the Committee, 
to put their heads together, and decide on, or in the 
schedule, that out-door O-rapes be exhibited with all the 
spur above the bunch untouched, be it one joint, or three 
joints, or forty joints before the fruit. On this rule 
being complied with, the big bunches I mention would 
have, on the average, twelve feet of spur, and that, of 
course, would disqualify them by another clause in the 
schedule. 
After the practice was in full motion,—that is, after 
out-door Grapes came to be looked for at shows, as 
regularly as Hamburghs, —I would confine the best prizes 
to the Grapes which were grown on Hoare’s system 
of pruning and training, and I would have them shown 
quite different to anything that has been done yet. I 
would come out as strong as Mr. Errington did last 
week, with his most able and most practical article on 
orchard-houses, in every syllable of which I perfectly 
and most conscientiously agree with him. Yes, I would 
come out, just like his Camellia compost, with the small 
dust, and close, dry clay of science sifted out of it, and 
none but the two-inch lumps of practical knowledge, and 
the bare geological compounded in my compost. You 
must not only show me how you had grown those Grapes, 
but also how you pruned the trees, how many bunches 
you left to one spur, and how many bunches you could 
profitably get from a last year’s shoot. Then people 
would learn the value of what they paid for admission to 
that show, and the big stool and fool systems would have 
no chance, but with people who have no practical know¬ 
ledge to guide them in giving their awards. 
I once asked a clever exhibitor of Grapes in Regent 
Street,-—“How came you to let Mr. Merryman beat you 
to-day with his Hamburghs ? ” “ Oh! ” said he, “ Mr. 
Merryman’s Vines are only seven years old from the plant¬ 
ing, and mine are fifteen years old, and that makes all the 
difference.” Now, on Hoare’s system, the odds should be 
in favour of the olderVines. Indeed, on that system. Vines 
seldom come of age at seven years from planting; because 
after planting, no matter how strong the young Vines 
were, the plants ought to be cut down to the last bud, 
next the soil, for the first two years, and, with ordinary 
plants, the third year also. To be sure, that is different 
from the way Hoare himself advises ; but the same con¬ 
clusion is thus arrived at by more scientific and practical 
means, than he sets forth in a given diameter of stem, 
or trunk, to a certain weight of crop. The four hardy Vines 
which Mr. Rivers very kindly presented to me last spring, 
I cut down to the last eye when I planted them, and this 
month I cut them a second time quite as low. My rule 
with them—that is, unassisted out-door Grapes, or Vines— 
is the same as that for all kinds of climbers whatever, 
—not to allow a single shoot to remain for permanency, 
until the roots are sufficiently strong to throw up a shoot 
as strong as any old-established plant of the same kind 
could possibly do. Thus I save time, to begin with, and 
the bother and vexation of working from inferior and hide¬ 
bound wood. 
I believe Hr. Lindley will turn a convert to out¬ 
door Grapes after all; and, if so, we shall certainly 
get rid of the stumbling caused hy the Horticultural 
Society since 1830, when he took up the reins. He 
speaks most favourably of Blade Hamburghs, which 
ripened perfectly in Yorkshire, this season, on a flued 
wall, without being told if the flue was really used ; and 
Blade Hamburghs, from the neighbourhood of Glasgow, 
are on record as having ripened perfectly, many years 
running. I have seen these Hamburghs perfectly ripe 
in the garden of the Infirmary, at Inverness, at Forres 
and Gordon Castle, in the next county, to the eastward. 
But these Scotch Hamburghs, and the Yorkshire ones, 
I believe to be the Bsperione, which no man on earth can 
distinguish from each other, but by the difference in 
hardihood. But we had seen quite plain, this time last 
year, that two distinct kinds are grown and sold for 
the Bsperione ; and, of course, one of them can only be 
true, and that true one is, probably, grown extensively 
under the name of Black Hamburgh. 
I have often spoken of having grown thousands of 
bunches of the true Bsperione, which ripened and 
coloured as well as a Hamburgh ever did, from a south 
wall, which was flued, but the flue never used. No 
one could distinguish them from hothouse Grapes; 
indeed, for many years, they were the principal Grapes 
in the desert at Eastnor Castle, where some of the best 
